


Fire and Brimstone Have Got Nothing On You

by fall_aster



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29208936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fall_aster/pseuds/fall_aster
Summary: “Do you ever play pranks with those fangs of yours?”—Or The Wilds but if instead of a plane crash, there was a magic crash
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	1. Crashing into Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be chaotic because I’m very disorganized and didn’t plan this out in my head and honestly I apologize if I re-write twilight (it was either re-writing twilight or re-writing outlander). I have no idea where this is going and I have too many feelings to sort through to actually think of anything well written. So join me with this trash writing if you also have too many feelings. Also not super important, but I’m making all of the characters college-aged because I wanted to ignore their parent’s watchful eyes.

Toni’s head was spinning when she came to. It only took her a second before she realized her stomach was equally spinning and she folded over as she puked up all of the bile that had been churning. She stood up shakily, the acid taste still lingering in her mouth overcrowding any other awareness. She had woken in a forest of pine trees and total silence. The silence worked its way through her psyche and filled up her thoroughly emptied stomach with a pit of nothingness. She tried to turn around and stumbled until she fell, clutching onto a tree. The feeling of the tough bark under her hand couldn’t just be her imagination. _Had I really managed to get lost in a fucking forest?_ She tried to remember how she got there. Her vomit hadn’t tasted like she had had a long night of drinking, but her head certainly felt like it. The sky was bright and the sun was full, it was definitely mid day, not the early morning stumbling after an indulgent night. And anyways, the last party she had been too was with Reagan and she didn’t particularly want to remember that. 

Still trying to wave off her confusion, Toni started to walk further forward. Though, forward didn’t mean a lot in this forest since every direction looked the same. She kicked at the underbrush as she went, expending extra energy as the rest of her body jerked to keep up with her feet. She stumbled when her foot hit something, hard. Her body crashed next, feeling the impact from her shins to her head. She had run into a boundary fence. It was waist high and made of wooden posts joined together by three rows of metal wire. That didn’t explain the smack her face had taken. She looked again, but she had only run into a fence, there was nothing above it. The other side of the fence had the same forest and it continued with no break in the tree cover. She stuck her hand out and hit something solid where there should only be air. It felt rough and smooth at the same time, and almost wet. She shook her head and moved back from the tall fence that wasn’t tall. 

“What the fuck happened last night?” She shouted at the fence that wasn’t a fence.

She slammed her hand into the air above the fence, feeling but not hearing the slap. Something sparked next to her, the underbrush briefly alighting and then going out, leaving a 6in circle of charred leaves on her right. Keeping as much distance as she could from the fence, she walked along the tree line hoping to find some answers to her predicament and recover some memory from the night before. She hadn’t gone far, though it had taken forever, before she saw someone up ahead. Or rather someone saw her.

“Hello?” The stranger called out. It was a female voice.

“Who the fuck are you?” Toni said, walking closer. She tried to make it look as if she was able to stand straight, but couldn’t quite manage it without using a tree for support. As she got closer however, the stranger seemed to be in the same predicament as she was. The woman looked pale and sweaty, her cargo pants couldn’t hide how much she was shaking. She wasn’t holding onto a tree, but it looked like a leaf could topple her over. Toni figured the two of them looked pretty similar. “You have any fucking idea how you got here either?”

“No fucking clue.” The stranger said. “I think I was at school and suddenly I felt like someone had rolled me up and tied me into a pretzel. I’m Dot by the way.” Dot said with the hint of a southern accent. 

Toni nodded in response, “Toni.”

“Well then Toni, any idea how you got here?”

“No, I can’t even remember what I was doing before this, I just feel like I’ve been put through a washing machine. Are you from Georgia? Where even are we?”

“Fuck no, I’m not from Georgia. Texas, and this certainly ain’t it. I don’t know anywhere in Texas that would feel this cool in June.”

“It could be Minnesota, at least that’s where I was last night. But how’d you get all the way from Texas without even remembering it?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Toni opened her mouth to respond, but then both of them stilled. There was someone shouting in the distance. 

“That sounds like it’s coming from that direction,” Dot pointed out, “let’s go.”

The two of them set off. Maybe they both were attempting to run, but it looked more like a speedy hobble, zigzagging towards the source of the sound. The closer they got, the clearer they could make out the words. It sounded as if someone was shouting their head off. 

“I have things to do today! I can’t be stranded god knows where! I just can’t be, I have plans!” The voice said.

As Dot and Toni walked further towards the noise, they found themselves upon a wide clearing. There were two figures at the edge of the woods a few paces from them. The two girls, women, maybe Toni’s own age, she wasn’t sure, were standing facing each other. They looked similar, maybe related even, though their body language couldn’t have been more different. The woman who was yelling was standing above the other even though they were the same height. Her arms were out gesticulating, the athletic wear unintentionally showing off her muscled body. The other woman was, not quite cowering beneath her, but definitely submitting. She looked like she was letting the world swallow her. Her clothes hung off her, nondescript and billowing. Her hands were hidden in their folds, her shoulders slumped. The only things not hiding were her eyes. She met the other woman’s eyes dead on. 

“Are you done?” Dot yelled at them as they approached, “because I don’t even know you and I sure am.”

The two women swung around and stared as they realized they had an audience. 

“Have you always been here, or do you also have no idea how the fuck you got here?” Toni asked.

“We were, we were just walking around campus and suddenly we were here,” the woman with the piercing eyes said, “I’m Nora and this is my sister Rachel.”

“Campus, which campus?” Toni asked.

“I’m at Cornell, Rachel was visiting me for the weekend,” Nora said. 

“And you remember what you were doing before this, because my brain’s a fucking blank,” Toni said.

“I mean yeah,” Nora said, “interesting that you don’t remember.”

“Anyways, I’m Dot and this here is Toni,” Dot said, “I was just in Texas and Toni was in Minnesota before all this fun.”

“You call this fun,” Rachel said, stepping forward to join them finally, still brewing with her anger.

“I was clearly being sarcastic,” Dot replied, “of course I don’t find this fun.” She would have crossed her arms tighter if she could. “Well, anyone want to try to figure out where the fuck we are, or do you two want to continue this fighting?” Dot started walking further into the clearing in the woods before anyone could respond.

The rest of them followed, Dot out in front, Toni next and closing in, Rachel right behind Toni and Nora trailing a little ways off, separating herself from her sister. Maybe it shouldn’t be called a clearing, owing to how massive it was. As Toni started to walk further in, the trees fell away quickly and a distant shape appeared. It was a building of some sort, maybe a quarter of a mile away from where they started. They all headed straight towards it. The building started to take shape as they approached. It was a bigger house than Toni had ever been to. She didn’t know anything about architecture, but it looked old. Old in a way that’s been kept up, not old in the way all of the houses she grew up in were with their chipped paint and rusty door hinges. For an old house, this looked brand new.

A few feet in front of the house were another set of figures. Someone was on the ground with another person leering over them. Toni recognized the figure laying down and immediately broke out into a run.

“Marty!” She called as she pushed past Dot and sprinted towards her friend. 

The figure on the ground, Martha looked up, a slight grimace on her normally annoyingly cheerful face. “It’s okay, I’m fine, seriously, Shelby’s been, Shelby’s been amazing,” she said slightly out of breath.

Toni barely acknowledged the other woman, Shelby before dropping to Martha’s side. She glanced up quickly as she pushed Shelby aside. The woman was wearing what could only be described as a shimmering house coat, silky and far too inappropriate to be wearing out in a forest. “What the fuck are you wearing?” Toni asked.

Shelby shook her head and took a step back in lieu of an answer. 

Just as quickly, Toni’s full attention was back on Martha. Her friend had her arm on Toni’s leg, staying her, though Toni had no desire to go anywhere. Martha’s foot was wrapped with something as shiny as Shelby’s house coat, clearly swollen through the binding. Toni carefully rubbed around the swelling, Martha wincing in response. She sat beside Martha and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. 

“Shelby?” Dot asked after arriving to the scene, Rachel and Nora alongside her. 

“Dot? What on earth are you doing here?” Shelby asked in a distinct southern accent, much stronger than Dot’s. 

“I could ask you the same,” Dot said, “but considering none of us know why we’re here either I’m not sure what to tell you.”

“This is my house,” Shelby said, “I was inside when I heard Martha cry out all of the sudden and came out to help.”

“Your house?” Toni interjected, “you live here?”

“Wait, why do you have a house in wherever this is and not in Texas?” Dot said. “Where even are we?”

“You’re all on my family’s estate, though it’s just me at the moment,” Shelby held out her arms gesturing at the forest beyond. “We’re in Montana, about four hours away from Helena. I come here on school breaks to get away from the hustle and bustle, you know how tiring university can be.”

“Montana, how the fuck did we get to Montana?” Rachel said. 

“Yeah, all of the rest of us were twisted through a meat grinder and ended up here, dropped from the sky,” Toni said. She looked at Martha and didn’t notice any disagreement from her. “Also, I’m not so sure we can leave.”

“What do you mean, we can’t leave?” Nora asked.

“I don’t know what kind of fence you’ve got here but there was some weird invisible barrier shit happening through and above it,” Toni said, glaring at Shelby.

“Come on, let’s get Martha inside and then we can go take a look at the fence,” Shelby said, moving to hoist Martha up.

“I’ve got this.” Toni bypassed Shelby to reach for Martha who gave her a disapproving look as she was helped to her feet. “Just lead us inside your fucking mansion.”

Shelby brought them into the front room and Toni set Martha down on one of Shelby’s massive sofas, not feeling too bad about the dirt they tracked with them. 

“Do you guys hear that,” Dot said as she reached the threshold. Dot grabbed Rachel and pulled her forward, looking a bit scared for the first time. 

That’s when Toni heard it too, someone upstairs was yelling for help. She double checked Martha was okay on the couch and ran after Dot. Dot followed the sound to a room off the second floor’s hallway. The closer Toni got, the more desperation she could hear in the voice calling out. She watched as Dot sprung open the door, not hesitating for a moment. She couldn’t see around Dot and Rachel at first, but both of them did finally hesitate at the scene in front of them. When they moved through the doorway, Toni and Shelby were able to see into the room. It was a bathroom, though much larger than any Toni deemed necessary, and for sure this house had multiple. While large, the bathroom wasn’t shiny and clean, though that was mostly due to the dirt and blood attached to the three figures occupying it. There was a woman seated on the closed toilet, there was something odd about the toilet, but Toni ignored that. The woman was clearly not the one who had been yelling for she didn’t even appear to notice that anyone had entered. She sat staring ahead at the green tiled walls, shaking ever so slightly. There was another woman who was draped over a cracked sink and she appeared to be the source of the blood that was dripping from the faucet in cruel irony. 

The third woman was clutching at the fallen figure’s stomach. “Help me. She’s not breathing.”

“Okay, let’s get her down,” Dot said as she and Rachel moved to either side of the fallen girl. 

They gently pulled her to the floor which exposed the mess of the sink. The girl was not moving. Dot started CPR immediately. Her hands moving so quickly as she tried to revive the girl that she barely was moving her chest. 

“Hey, hey, hey, ease up Dottie,” Shelby tried to cut in “you’re going way to fast.”

“You’re going way to fast, you’re pumping like double time,” Rachel said.

“There’s no such thing as too fast, only too slow,” Dot said.

“Actually compressions can be too fast if they’re not going deep enough,” Nora’s calm voice joined the fray.

“Alright, if you all such experts, someone else tag in.” Everyone was pushing at Dot until finally she drew away. “Who knows CPR?”

It was at that moment that the woman on the toilet gave any indication that she was paying attention. She raised her hand along with everyone else in the room. Dot looked at her for a long moment before resuming compressions, this time at a more mediated pace. They all sat in tense silence, the only noise was Dot muttering a count to her compressions. Finally, the girl took in a breath. Dot slumped back and everyone looked at the now revived girl. 

“Let’s get her downstairs with Martha while we figure out what the fuck is going on,” Toni said.

Dot helped the girl up and with Rachel’s help they started to carry her downstairs, Nora leading the way. Surprisingly, the still silent woman got up from her shocked state and followed them. Toni and the other woman, who seemed to have gotten some of her strength back went next. Toni looked back to see Shelby closing the door as she left the room.

Martha tried to stand up when they all entered the living room. Toni waved her down and went to sit next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. They helped the injured girl to a seat on one of the couches and everyone sat down. There were nine of them in total. Toni learned that the injured girl was Jeanette, the one helping her was Leah and the one in shock was Fatin. Leah and Fatin were both in California this morning and went to the same university before finding themselves and Jeanette, who was from San Francisco, in the bathroom of Shelby’s house together.

Rachel stood up pretty much right after she sat down. “Hey does anyone have a phone?” 

“Do you think we would have said something if we did?” Toni said. She had already checked her pockets back in the forest and any phone she might have been carrying was gone.

“Just trying to think of getting back, alright?” Rachel said.

“I have a phone but I don’t have any service at all,” Dot added, “where on earth are you living Shelby?”

“Also don’t you have a phone if this is your house and all?” Rachel said. 

“Listen, listen, listen, it’s the 21st century, y’all will be able to back. In the meantime, we should figure out what actually happened.” Shelby said, ignoring the phone question. “Okay, don’t worry. Cause if God brought us to it, God will bring us through it.”

“You know the whole Jesus saves thing isn’t like literal,” Toni said. “He’s not going to jet pack down and bring us back to Minnesota.”

“No Toni, the lord saves those who save themselves, which is why I’m going to go and inspect the fence, see what this force field is all about” Shelby said, adding finger quotes to the last part. “Maybe you should come with.”

“Hard pass.” Toni didn’t want to spend time with any sort of rich Jesus freak. “Besides, it’s your fence.”

“Okay, well I’d better change into something more fitting.” Shelby nodded down at her still ridiculous silk robe. “I’ll be back down and then we can try and figure all of this out.”


	2. Time Distortion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shelby and Toni go exploring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've seen the series, you know what's coming CW for character death the last few paragraphs.

As Shelby went upstairs to change, she looked around at the house that wasn’t the same house as she had woken up in this morning. Somehow her house had reverted back to how it looked in the 20s, the 1920s. Even her bathrobe was the one she had had during her stay here as she waited out the 30s. All of the fixtures, the decorations, the furniture looked like the ones she had had a hundred years ago but without any signs of aging, just like her she supposed. 

She walked to the master bedroom, luckily at the other end of the hallway from the bloodied bathroom. She would have to deal with that later. Sure enough, her closet was filled with clothes she had used to own. How she was going to explain her now very outdated style to the others she wasn’t sure. Clearly something magical had happened. Without knowing if anyone else knew about the intricacies of magic, she didn’t want to say anything that might expose her. At least only Dot knew her from outside of this place, so maybe the rest of them would just assume she was an eccentric heiress. And besides, she barely knew Dot, they went to a big enough university. She pulled on a pair of trousers, masculine tailored styles hadn’t changed much over time, and a boxy blouse without too many frills. It would have to do for now and was better than some of her beaded dinner dresses. 

Her stomach had felt the same twist all of the others were describing, but how could she explain that she had not traveled through space, but that her space had traveled through time. Well, maybe traveled wasn’t the right word, distorted through time. The lingering sickness was something her body wasn’t used to and that alone made her suspicious. Someone must have known what they were doing if they were able to have that kind of an effect on someone like her. She decided she would worry about it later, first she needed to deal with her unexpected and unwelcome guests.

When Shelby got back downstairs, Toni was standing up, arms crossed, facing her.

“I’m coming with you,” Toni said, quickly glancing down to Martha.

Shelby nodded without comment, leading the way out the front door. 

Stepping back outside was the same. There was an eerie silence. It wasn’t all encompassing for she could hear the sound of her footfalls and Toni breathing behind her. She wondered if the others had noticed, not being familiar with the constant bird noises and swooshing wind as she was, such sounds that could be heard with an average ear. She also could no longer hear the insects working their way through the underbrush or the hush of decay after a bird falls or the beating of the deer heart half a mile away. 

Shelby lead the way back into the dense woods and towards the boundary of her property. She was trying to listen for any sort of disturbance in the silence that might give a clue to the magical event that had dropped eight girls onto her land and trapped them all here. She couldn’t hear a lot over Toni’s heavy footfalls and angry muttering. 

“Keep your ears pealed, we need to be cautious in case whatever dropped you all here is around or somehow has done anything to the forest,” Shelby said, glancing back at Toni.

Toni’s face was hard set. Her eyes barring into Shelby as she responded. “And what do you think lead to us being here? Other than you being born rich in your fancy house?”

“I have no earthly idea. That’s why we should be careful.”

“You scared?”

“And you aren’t?” Shelby had turned back around but kept talking over her shoulder. “You get dropped, states away from where you were this morning with no memory of getting here and you aren’t the least bit wary of it all?”

“I just want to figure out how to get out of here and back to normal life, not that you’d know what that is with your princess palace and the clothes to match.” 

“You know, I’m not just some delicate indoor princess.” Shelby didn’t know why she felt the need to justify this to Toni, but didn’t want her to think she was weak. “I go hunting all the time. I can pull in a 10 point buck and call it an afternoon’s work.”

“Yeah you would, seeing as you probably haven’t worked a real job in your life.” Toni had closed some of the gap between them. “You know, one hard core thing doesn’t mean you’re not mostly an indoor princess. How many pillows you got on your bed in that fancy house of yours? I bet you consider removing and replacing your pillows every day to be a day’s work too. Am I right, you know I’m right.”

“God builds us to contain multitudes Toni,” she faced back towards Toni. “Now, turn around, because I have to pee,” she said with a gentle push on Toni’s shoulder. Pointedly ignoring Toni’s muscled arm under hers. “Plug your ears.” She rolled her eyes when Toni tried to turn around and glare at her. “Plug your ears or I’ll have to sing.”

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Toni said finally turning away from Shelby fully.

When Shelby had finished she took the lead again, not noticing Toni’s eyes finding her a second before she had gotten all of her clothes back into place.

The two of them reached the boundary then, which was good because someone was going to hit the other before too long the way things were going. Shelby stood next to the fence and slowly moved her hand over the air around it. Just as Toni had said, the fence appeared to continue well above the wooden posts. She couldn’t quite identify what the air felt like. It was everything at once, seemingly all textures and no texture at all, but definitely a bit wet. Shelby wasn’t sure. 

“So what do you make of that,” Toni said. “I’m guessing this wasn’t in the original blueprints." 

“No, it wasn’t.” Not that Shelby could come up with a magical explanation either, but how could she explain this in a non-magical way? And who or what had created this boundary? “Let’s head back and see what the others think. If anyone has any clues.”

“I bet we’ll get rich once they find us. suing for damages and whatever, not that your ass needs the money,” Toni said. “That is if we can explain any of this to a Jury.”

“Shh, keep listening. I’m still not sure what else is out there.” Shelby was getting a little sick of Toni’s constant digs at her and she didn’t want to be pushed to come up with an explanation, at least without thinking through a plausible lie first. Toni didn’t know the first thing about her. Not that Shelby would ever confess that massive secret. And besides, Toni’s content chatter was distracting her from trying to pay attention to the changes in the forest.

Just when Shelby had stopped hearing the echo of Toni’s voice, she started up again.

“I’m so sick of looking at your fucking ponytail, I feel like it thinks it’s better than me,” Toni said.

“Then how bout you go in front.” Shelby was losing her normally well-kept patience.

“Fine.” Toni pushed in front, brushing Shelby’s arm forcefully as she did. 

Shelby could finally listen to the forest, but she couldn’t hear anything. Toni’s voice had masked the overwhelming silence of a usually lively forest. It suddenly got too quiet, so despite all Shelby’s complaints just a moment ago, she started praying out loud. _Well I can’t talk about anything real, so I’ll deflect with Jesus._ Besides, a little extra prayer could never hurt.

Of course, Toni didn’t let that go. “Weren’t you just telling me to shut up and listen?”

“It’s different, when you pray god opens up your senses,” Shelby responded quickly.

“God’s such a joke, don’t you know he’s just a brain washing tool designed to inflate the masses?” Toni had encroached in Shelby’s space, getting closer without lowering her volume.

Shelby matched her stance, leaning in. “Even if he were just a brain washing tool,” she leaned in further, this time lowering her voice just slightly and raising her eyebrows, “do you ever think maybe your brain could use a good scrub?”

That did the trick.

“Fuck off,” Toni said. She turned around and immediately began walking away, not waiting to see if Shelby followed.   
“Lord in your mercy—,” Shelby kept praying, quieter this time, just enough to mask the silence. Suddenly, she was falling. She let out a short yell as a branch hit her face and subsequently her face hit the forest floor. 

It took Shelby a few seconds to process what had happened. No human should have been able to catch her so off guard that they could topple her. She reached up to touch her forehead where the branch had hit. She was bleeding, not as much as a human would, but would anyone notice when she healed faster than she should? _Fuck, I should have seen it coming. I should have been able to duck in time._

“Fuck, fuck, Shelby.” Toni was immediately at her side. “Shit, I swear I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s alright,” Shelby said. She was still very shaky, not from the fall but from being so caught off guard. She thought she smelled something burning to, as if the air around Toni had gotten singed which was odd.

“Hey a—” Toni started. She reached forward to help Shelby up.

“Go ahead and go on back I will too but you should get a head start. I’d really rather walk alone.” Shelby couldn’t let Toni touch her, it would rattle her too much at this point.

Shelby watched Toni walk back. Toni hadn’t protested Shelby’s brush off, obviously guilty for her split-second loss of temper. Shelby wondered about that. Not the loss of temper, Toni was clearly quick to anger, but the guilt. Toni didn’t strike Shelby as the type of person to feel very much guilt over hurting someone she clearly didn’t like. Shelby meant nothing to her, so why would she feel bad about a small scrape? Shelby picked herself up and looked around. The silence of the forest was still deafening. She gave Toni a few minute head start before following after her, using the walk back to think about what she could tell the others. She didn’t trust Toni to come up with an explanation all on her own, in case it hit too close to the truth. 

By the time Shelby approached her house, she could see Toni through the living room window. She opened the door quietly, it was habit to make her steps softer than most humans would detect. The seven of them who had stayed behind were still sitting around her living room with Toni standing above Martha. Jeanette looked worse than when they had left and Fatin was still sitting stock a couch cushion away. 

“Where’s Shelby?” Martha was asking just as Shelby stepped into the room. When Martha noticed her, she sat up straighter, “Shelby!”

“Yep, she’s right there,” Toni said, not able to meet Shelby’s gaze. 

“Your head!” Martha said, obviously noticing some of the remaining blood on Shelby’s forehead. 

“Oh it’s fine, its good. ran smack into a tree if you can believe.” Shelby said and then met Toni’s eyes deliberately. “Very silly of me.”

Toni broke the eye contact first.

“Well, I’m not sure if Toni said anything, but the fence can’t be penetrated.” Shelby ignored Martha’s giggles at the word penetrated and continued. “It’s become something of a barrier.”

“How? What’s wrong with your place?” Leah asked, her voice still hoarse and raspy.

“And how are we going to get out of here?” Rachel said.

“It’s an act of God, there’s no reasonable explanation,” Shelby responded.

“No, no, there has to something, nothing just happens like this,” Leah said. 

“Maybe Shelby’s right though, and something above our normal plane of reasoning has happened,” Nora said. “There have been instances all over the world of supernatural occurrences and other phenomena that can’t be explained by our current scientific understanding yet.

“Okay, so we’re in a conspiracy theory, this is just great,” Dot said. 

“Nora’s right, if you can provide a reasonable scientific explanation, I’m all ears, but this feels like something else,” Shelby cut off Dot from potentially making a joke about how the moon landing was a hoax or something.

“Again, I don’t care how we got here, how are we going to get out of here?” Rachel asked, standing up this time. “Don’t you have a phone here Shelby?”

Shelby didn’t know how to respond that the phone she had here would only work with a switchboard operator and there were definitely no more of those in operation anymore. “No, I don’t have a working landline anymore, with all the cell phones these days it seemed redundant.”

“Redundant, redundant, how could you not be prepared?” Rachel was practically yelling now.

“You mean I should have been prepared for an inexplicable act of God that left me trapped in my summer home by an invisible barrier?” Shelby kept her voice level, but only just. 

“Don’t any of you have cell phones?” Rachel turned back on the rest of the room.

Everyone shook their heads except for Fatin and Jeanette but Rachel ignored their lack of participation. 

“Well where did they all go?” Rachel yelled back at everyone’s blank faces. “I’m assuming you all had some this morning before you got here?”

“No one has their phone Rachel, we’re all in the same boat. It’s not anyone’s fault,” Shelby said, moving in closer to her to try and calm her down. “We can go check out the front road, maybe we can get far enough down it that we might see someone passing by who can help.”  
“That’s a whole lot of maybe from someone who doesn’t have a home phone,” Rachel said.

Shelby ignored this. 

“Ugh, we’re going to die here in this Jesus mansion,” Toni said. It sounded like she was joking but there might have been some real fear to her statement. 

“Um,” Leah said so quiet only Shelby heard at first. “um, we might not, but she definitely will.” 

Everyone looked at Leah except Jeanette. Jeanette was in the process of falling off the couch. It felt like she fell in slow motion, except it was just Jeanette trying desperately to hold onto any life left. She left behind a dark stain on Shelby’s couch as she sank onto the floor with a groan. Leah got up from her adjacent spot and frantically felt for Jeanette’s pulse. There was blood slowly seeping from around Jeanette’s mouth as Leah frantically tried to start CPR. Shelby couldn’t look away. Leah stopped immediately when the chest compressions caused more blood to sputter from Jeanette’s mouth. Leah frantically lifted up Jeanette’s shirt. Purple and green bruising covered her abdomen. Jeanette has been bleeding internally this whole time. She was dead. 

“What do we do now?” Fatin, the least likely to speak had come out of her reverie. 

No one knew how to answer her. Everyone was silent as Leah wiped her bloodied hands off on Jeanette’s skirt.

Finally, Dot spoke, “we should move her.”

Shelby wished that these words were enough to shake her out of her precision focus on Jeanette’s body, but they were not. She heard Dot, but never took her eyes and the rest of her other senses away from the body. She could hear the lack of blood flow, the slow sighing of organs beginning to distend. The others began to roll Jeanette’s body onto one of her throw blankets. The new sounds and smells being released only to Shelby’s senses overwhelmed her. She might recall someone asking if they could use her blanket, but she couldn’t be sure. Toni, Dot, Rachel and Leah had picked up the four corners of the blanket and begun to lift Jeanette in her makeshift shelter. They brushed past Shelby on their way out of the living room, blood slipping down Jeanette’s chin as they transported her. Nora, Fatin and Martha followed behind. 

Shelby was alone in the room. She walked over to where Jeanette had been sitting on her couch and ran her finger through some almost dried blood left behind. She sucked her finger into her mouth gently, her body immediately responding to the taste. She lingered a moment more before going outside to join the others. 

The eight of them surrounded Jeanette’s body a little way from Shelby’s house. Dot had moved them to the back yard. She directed them all to start digging a small grave. No one but Shelby wanted to look at her body any more than necessary. They didn’t talk as they buried her in the shallow grave. Her death had hit home to everyone that they weren’t on some mysterious adventure, but that they were trapped somehow far away from where they were supposed to be or rather where they thought they were supposed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how I feel about using the dialogue from the series. On the one hand, there's no way I'm going to write something better but I don't want to just parrot it either. It will start to get more different as the plot deviates from the series. Also will the next chapter be up in any reasonable time scale, probably not, everything as always is busy.

**Author's Note:**

> I have the next chapter mapped out, but after that, we'll see.


End file.
